How to backup photos on Android

Now that cameras on smartphones are so good that you no longer carry your digital camera around on days out, you’re probably a bit worried about losing all those crystal clear images if your phone’s broken, lost or stolen so you should regularly backup your photos. Attaching your phone to your computer and downloading them is the easiest way to backup photos on Android, but you’re not always within sight of your home PC and if the space on your device is limited, you’ll need to remove the photos anyway in order to keep snapping away.

Getty - Joe Raedle

Google+

The best way of making sure you keep those precious images is to set auto-backup to Google+ on. To do this from your phone, open the photo app, touch the menu button and then select Settings. Just touch Auto-backup and switch the toggle to On. You can download an unlimited quantity of standard-sized images and videos without charge, so as long as your images are 2,048 px or less on their longest side and your videos are less than 15 minutes long, you won’t need to pay a penny. If that’s not the case, check out support.google.com for information on the current price structure.

Dropbox

This is a cloud storage service that also automatically uploads videos and photos. You can view the files through the Dropbox app or through their website and you can use the app to easily pull the images over when you want to store them on your hard drive. You can upload full resolution images with this app but the free service only offers 2GB of storage space.

BitTorrent Sync

If you’re not interested in cloud storage, then BitTorrent Sync could be the app for you. You’ll need to download the app then then go into the Backup section. Tap the folder icon and then locate the phone’s photo directory. There’s some desktop software to download too which you’ll need to access and set to Add a Sync Folder under the Folders tab. When it’s set up and your smartphone and PC are attached to the same Wi-Fi network, the images and videos will automatically backup to the computer.